U.S. National News

The United States federal government will shut down at midnight tonight Feb. 8 into 9, because the Congress has not passed a budget bill or Continuing Resolution.

This is the second such shutdown in three weeks.

There will be a vote in the Senate Friday morning, and a deal may still be struck, but technically, the gov't will have shut down at midnight.

If a deal is NOT struck, then both sides are likely to remain entrenched and the federal government will remain closed for quite awhile. Which isn't really a bad thing.

They don't do very much anyway . . . . except spend our hard-earned money; and we don't get much bang-for-the-buck when they spend our money.

UPDATE 9:00 AM EST --

In the long history of government shutdowns, this one was a record: the shortest ever.

The lapse in federal funding lasted less than 6 hours—with the government officially unfunded from 12:01 a.m. on Friday to about 5:30 a.m. when lawmakers scrambled to pass a six-week spending bill.

President Trump still has to sign the budget bill that cleared Congress for the money to start flowing. But he’s expected to do so, and the government should be up and running without interruption Friday.

This was the second shutdown in a month—and the 20th since the 1970s, according to a tally by the Congressional Research Service.

Four previous shutdowns, all in the 1980s, lasted just one day—but a full day—according the CRS data. The longest shutdown?

A 21-day spending impasse that stretched from Dec. 5, 1995 until Jan. 6, 1996—pitting then President Bill Clinton against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.